


gospel of wrath

by void_emissary



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: (tags will be updated), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Use, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Feral Behavior, Feral deputy lol, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Nightmares, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Nonbinary Character, Other, possible dom/sub undertones eventually, rook has no gender they're just a feral little creature
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:21:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23119903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/void_emissary/pseuds/void_emissary
Summary: Blood stained their clothes, their skin, their soul--rolling in rivets down their face and in sweat soaked dreams. They couldn’t even remember the first life they’d taken anymore, though they were sure they felt something at the time. Some kind of emotion other than wrath or complacency. Or maybe it had knocked something loose inside.The Deputy loses themself somewhere along the way and the Seeds decide to intervene on a whim.
Relationships: Deputy | Judge & Faith Seed, Deputy | Judge & Jacob Seed, Deputy | Judge & John Seed, Deputy | Judge & Joseph Seed, Deputy | Judge/Jacob Seed, Deputy | Judge/Jacob Seed/John Seed/Joseph Seed, Deputy | Judge/John Seed, Deputy | Judge/Joseph Seed
Comments: 6
Kudos: 37





	gospel of wrath

**Author's Note:**

> hey what's up. this has been sitting in my drafts for a while and i've decided to revisit it after taking a break from writing that lasted longer than it should have.

Everything got worse. It always got worse.

Whitetails, the Resistance, Dutch nagging and _nagging_ right into their noggin, strangers pleading, _hey dep, you got a minute? I could use your help._ A constant, never-ending stream of _help me, Rook_ , like they couldn’t do anything on their own. Like somehow a newbie deputy was better at this than anyone else, at blowing up silos with explosives they made out of a handful of materials scavenged from empty homes and abandoned bunkers--at walking into an outpost with nothing but a lead pipe and a ravenous, insatiable hunger. Blood stained their clothes, their skin, their soul--rolling in rivets down their face and in sweat soaked dreams. They couldn’t even remember the first life they’d taken anymore, though they were sure they felt something at the time. Some kind of emotion other than wrath or complacency. Or maybe it had knocked something loose inside. 

The first time one of the Seeds--John--kidnapped them, it was almost a blessing. One too many trucks destroyed, one too many roadblocks blasted apart with remote explosives, hostages freed with nothing more than a nod when they’d thank them and tell them where there was more to be done. Always more to be done. John was mad--his voice crackling on the radio in a direct message to Rook. Angry--livid even--completely different than when he’d appeared on TV, holding Hudson by her throat with a friendly smile-- _don’t worry, we’ll come for you_.

Drugged, dazed, head forced down into the Henbane as their body involuntarily jerked and thrashed against the strong arms holding them under was the closest thing to peace they’d felt in a very long time. 

When the cultist was done, they were brought to John himself and Rook saw the small shift in the man’s eyes, even through the blurry effects of the bliss. Their fingers tingled. 

“No, not this one. This one isn’t clean.” 

John’s hands were rougher on their arms, more personal than the nameless, faceless cultist from before. His fingers squeezed their shoulders, nails digging into skin through the thin fabric of their threadbare shirt as he pushed them back down into the cold water. For the tiniest of moments, Rook considered just breathing it all in--sucking in that great deep and opening their eyes in paradise but then the rage found them again, gripped them, gnawed their bones like a mongrel dog. Icy needles pricked their skin, seizing deep inside their lungs in a vice, suffocating and robbing them of strength and patience--

John jerked them back up out of the water, gasping, choking on air and all the words that never left their tongue. Just when he thought John would do it again, dreading and anticipating it in equal measure, another voice stopped him. “Do you mock the cleansing, John?” 

At first Rook didn’t recognize it, didn’t really hear it past their wheezing, rattling breaths. When they brought their shaky vision back up, the figure came sharply into focus and Joseph Seed stared the both of them down, distorted only around the edges where the bliss made things technicolor. Joseph held out his arms just like before, in the church. Outstretched to them. Welcoming. 

Bliss had a way of making their head funny. 

Rook fell into Joseph’s waiting arms, shivering and rasping harsh breaths against the man’s lapels as they clung to him. Warm. Joseph was--was warm. Gentle, even, as his hands came up to guide Rook’s shoulders back. Distantly, they thought he could hear Amazing Grace but they were sure that was the bliss swirling in their ears. 

“Even with all that you’ve done,” Joseph pulled them back enough so his glittery blue eyes met Rook’s own. Eyelids half mast and heavy, Rook struggled to keep their head raised and vision focused. Warm hands drifted to cup either side of their head, briefly sliding the wet hair out of their face along the way, fingers resting close to their ears where their skin met. “You are not beyond forgiveness. You have a purpose, whether you choose to embrace it or cast it aside.” 

Joseph closed that distance and pressed his lips to Rook’s forehead, nose brushing across their hairline with little puffs of breath. “You can be forgiven, Deputy.” 

It was sometime after that the nightmares started. The nights drew long and arduous when the visions seized their mind. Red-orange hues streaked across blackened earth--bright lights, fire, and the taste of ash. These dreams burned and broiled and for the first time in their life, they woke screaming. 

And then again. And again. Again, until Rook started avoiding sleep like they avoided the people they served in Hope county, when they could. Rook became sick with it.

John caught them two more times--once to choke them and threaten them with Hudson’s life as she sobbed and begged across the room, and again as he drove a needle deep into their flesh, carving the word wrath in big angular letters in the church.

John was right. 

Their sin was wrath. It was all they felt these days and it drove them to do some pretty fucked up things in the name of resistance. But it didn’t matter that they were doing these things because in the end, it was for the greater good. Supposedly. 

They started having their doubts sometime after they shot down John’s plane and chased him into a field. 

Rook was going to kill him--was ready to. John was right there in their grasp--spitting words of venom and Rook was looming above with wrath carved on their heart and a knife in their hand.

May God have mercy on your soul.

Against their better judgement, Rook punched John’s shit out but when he left him, the man was still breathing and very much alive. 

They’d just been tired. Tired of running through the wilderness, tearing down the foundations of the cult day after day while the Resistance stood back and watched and waited for them to finish. Watched them with wary eyes as they stalked through town, blood and ash caked up to their shoulders and they knew what Rook had done. They'd congratulated them, Mary May handed them a beer. Hudson gave soft words of gratitude, words that became jumbled and muffled in the chaos in their head.

John was presumed dead, if only because the bunker had been cleared out. They whispered. Gossiped. Reminded Rook that a small town is always a small town and the reason they asked them to do these things was because they didn’t want the blood on their hands, but they didn’t mind dirtying Rook’s. They cast side-long glances as they walked by, but had the manners to congratulate and thank them for their hard work when he met their gazes.

They’d become a one-man army running on canned peaches and pure, unadulterated rage. The Resistance didn’t know how to deal with that anymore.

It unnerved them that they preferred to sleep outside of town, that their throat couldn’t form words so they only ever grunted and sighed as a means of conversation, and that they kept doing as they were asked, even with the staggering body count. We need you.

They just didn’t get Rook. They didn’t need to--they just had to tolerate their silent presence as they stalked around Fall’s End before a hunt. 

Nick started joining Rook out of some weird sense of honor and they didn’t mind so much because Nick didn’t seem to mind them at all. Stupid, trusting Nick had Rook carrying his pregnant wife’s luggage only minutes after meeting, like they had known each other for years. It made it easy to sit in silence with the man, or to hear him chatter a one-sided conversation over the radio as he circled above in Carmina.

Nick will be a good father, Rook thought more than once. Nick’s heart gushed with the love of life.

Cheeseburger didn’t need to understand him, either. Cheeseburger just wanted to sniff and eat and there were no awkward silences that you got with humans or hard conversations--just trust that was built upon treats and a mutual love of murder. Sleeping against the bear, face pressed against his massive girth, his coarse hair, the musk filling their nose, was like a balm for the nightmares. Sometimes, they could actually sleep. Sometimes, they didn’t see Hope County burning alive--didn’t wake with ash on their tongue and smoke in their lungs. 

Rook knew they weren’t supposed to enjoy the cult music--in the same vein that they knew they weren’t supposed to enjoy sneaking up on people and snapping their necks with practiced ease. (None of this was supposed to be easy.) Although the trucks with the big speakers would draw in the angels, they’d sit on the hood of one of them, drawing in great breaths from cigarettes they’d found in an abandoned home along the way, and they’d listened. Staring out at nothing but the skies and mountains. A moment of mindlessness and peace in an otherwise hellish existence. He’s our shepherd, and we’re his flock. Now, he’s our captain, and our ship’s about to dock. Now he’s our keeper, to keep us safe from wrath----

If they stared for too long, red creeped in at the edges--smoke billowing from blackened trees in the periphery but every time they turned to look, the vision was gone. When the angels began to swarm, they left with a detonator in hand because sometimes it was just as nice to watch things burn by their own doing. At least they could control that.

Eventually, even Nick stopped coming along in their excursions.

Bliss swarmed through their blood, straight to the dark matter in their brain, euphoric and tingly like little ants crawling on the walls beneath their skin, and somewhere out there in a shack littered with bodies, two of Rook’s fingers sat nestled in the jaws of one of Jacob’s judges. They’d miss those fingers, they thought mindlessly as they cradled their mangled hand over their chest. Rook’s chest, that wheezed with each breath, caught in their throat as coppery blood seeped through their teeth, coating their tongue. Bullets had carved through their shoulder and their gut--hitting something vital, they were sure, but not vital enough to make it quick. Red poured from the hole beneath where they held their hands, life leaving their body second by second as they limped through the dreamy field on a twisted ankle. 

The bliss helped somewhat. Dulled the sharp edges, even as their muscles spasmed, a knife wound somewhere on the back of their thigh twisting the tendon with each step. They didn’t know where their body began or ended--where the pain began and ended. 

And eventually they laid down to rest in a field. 

It was an otherwise beautiful day. Wind rustled the bliss flowers, motes of white dancing in the gentle breeze--the sun high in the sky and soft, muted by the big fluffy clouds drifting by and the hazy bliss distortion. Somewhere, birds rang out Amazing Grace in tender chords--

“ _What are you doing?_ ” Came a sing-song voice. Faith’s. One they hadn’t heard since they had ventured into Jacob’s territory _(only you, only you)_ , but one that reminded them that they’d never finished purging Faith’s influence from her little corner of Hope County. Hadn’t finished with Jacob, for that matter. 

As an answer, they opened their mouth and let the blood gurgle on their lips. The same place all words went to die. _Help me, Faith._

A hand brushed across their cheek, something so close to being gentle their heart ached. “ _You’re going to die out here._ ” 

_As a matter of fact_ , they thought, _I sure am_. Because nothing sounded better than sleep and they knew what that meant. Had seen it themself, dozens and dozens of times. The light leaving someone’s eyes, faith unwavering until the end. But they didn’t have faith. They had nothing but the blood, rivers, spilling over their banks, washing their soul in unholy baptism. 

They were so tired.

Their eyes rolled back across the clouds, the birds, the lace hem of a skirt, until there was nothing but the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> like it? leave an encouraging comment or kudos! catch me @ void_emissary on twitter or void-emissary/void-epicure on tumblr


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